Seeking Life
by 4MeJasper
Summary: R stumbles across an unusual item on one of his hunting trips, a kaleidiscope. This is a story that explores characters from the book, before R's meeting with Julie...including a Boney soldier, in Chapter 2. February 12, 2013 - now posting character sketches for my plot-driven Warm Bodies story, A Dark Negative of Love.
1. Chapter 1

I don't own the story Warm Bodies, or the characters R, M, Julie or Nora. Isaac Marion does. And Summit made the movie great.

Hey, guys. I'm submitting some musings and ramblings on this fascinating book as well!

Seeking Life

Chapter 1 – Finding the Kaleidoscope

It had started out as just another day, same as any other, in this gray existence. I had no idea that something I would pick up randomly would have the capability to change my world.

The morning started out with the usual routine. Being dead, though still walking, I don't do much, and I'm used to passing the time going up and down the airport escalator, when it works. I fall in with the crowd that slowly paces the derelict airport that we all consider home. There is nothing homey about it; I think we are just here to stay out of the open air. Having a building around us seems better than just openness everywhere. There is already enough lack of meaning in our existence. To not even have a physical structure around us would be worse.

After the morning had gone by, I returned to my hideaway, my airplane. Having this probably does set me apart from the others, I suppose. Now it's my home, but back then, when the world still worked the way everyone thought was normal, this was a commercial airliner. I often stare at the embroidered name of the airline on the seatbacks as I sit in the seats, reclining if I want, and try to remember what it felt like to sleep and dream. When that doesn't work, I look around, and my eye invariably falls on the name of the airline, printed on the seatbacks. I can't read any more, of course. It's as if the letters, though they exist, flit away from my eyes before I can focus, slipping off before I can make out the intended meanings behind their squiggly shapes.

But the airplane has become more than a place where I recline in the seats. Now, it's where I stash my stuff, the treasures I collect from each hunting expedition.

I mean that I bring home more than just limbs or other assorted body parts to feed those who don't go out. And it happened on our hunting trip today, that I made my discovery. On this trip, organized by my friend M, we found some people holed up in a toy store. And that's where I located my treasure: a kaleidoscope. A long, cylindrical brass tube, with joints you could twist. As you looked inside, each twist of the tube revealed a different picture.

I look inside of the kaleidoscope again. Each time is so different. Like a book made of sand, you never saw the same image twice. You turn the cylinder, and the items inside-whether they were beads, pebbles, or bits of glass-form a new pattern. This elegant toy seemed capable of revealing endless variations based on a few pretty items, reflected in the kaleidoscope's internal mirrors. Sometimes I thought I saw a cathedral window, an image of a God I could no longer believe in. Other times I thought I saw the agony of the damned, a gashed eye or a screaming mouth.

As I continue looking into this tube, it begins to change my sense of what I would see when I looked away from it. Would anything have changed? Was there a different possible outcome in this world which had seemed to offer endless possibilities in the past? Had there ever been a different possible outcome for us?

I try to share the experience with my friend M. I take the kaleidoscope with me when I join him and put it on the table where we sit in airport's abandoned sports bar. But he doesn't pick it up. I hold it up, showing how to use it, but he's just not interested. I ponder again, how did we end up here? Did we just drift off into such emotional distance that our failing spirits didn't have the energy to leave our bodies when we died?

When we died, or whatever it was that had happened to us all way back when, were we supposed to lie still and just didn't? As we had approached life with so little enthusiasm, were we now unable to embrace the full finality of death?

Or were our spirits, denied passion in life, still searching for meaning in this new life? Because every time we feasted on a brain, images shot off inside like our heads like fireworks. It's as if the neurons inside our skulls remembered how to fire, except what we saw were not our own memories; they were the memories of our victims. It was as close as we came to dreaming.

But these experiences are more than our version of dreaming, they are also our temporary shot at living, at experiencing life again as a living being, capable of forming new experiences.

It made me wonder, though, what would happen to us when the living, those amazingly scented, walking food sources, ran out? There were certainly now more of us than there were of them. None of us had any idea of how many living were left. Numbers, like letters, fled from our minds in a scattered haze when we tried to think with them.

After a few days of looking through my kaleidoscope, I also began to look at the living I hunted differently. I began to think that they formed their own kaleidoscopes as they fled us in terror. Light bounced off of their still glossy hair, or I would see flashes of light reflecting off of a bright eye or glistening tooth. Even the inanimate objects that the living used to adorn themselves seemed to radiate this kind of energy. An earring that caught the sunlight, or even a watch or ring could shimmer against their still living skin.

But all this living beauty would be subsumed into our gray, slow world at the time of their death unless we removed and ate the brain. The flashes of brilliance would be gone, and their beautifully scented, graceful bodies would fade to gray and join our slow parade of suspended existence in the airport.

And so, after my hunting, when I was no longer hungry, I would return to my kaleidoscope, searching for something just out of reach, just out of focus. Maybe someday I would be able to reach out and grasp it.

PLEASE LEAVE A REVIEW, AND LET ME KNOW WHAT YOU THINK. I WILL SEND AN EXCERPT FROM MY NEXT CHAPTER, WHEN IT IS AVAILABLE, TO ALL REVIEWERS.


	2. Chapter 2 - The Boney Soldier

I don't own the story Warm Bodies, or the characters R, M, Julie or Nora. Isaac Marion does. And Summit made the movie great.

Hey, guys. I'm submitting some musings and ramblings on this fascinating book as well!

Seeking Life

Chapter 2 – The Boney Soldier

Hiss…hiss…hiss…

These half way beings…they're everywhere. Dead, as in no heart sounds…yet flesh still clings to them…still not…fully changed. To one of us.

They are competition for living food…though only the food we leave for them to find. They are so slow, weighted by their gray decaying flesh.

They cannot be eaten except when we are near starvation…so we leave them be…they are just one step from us…but their dead flesh will sustain us when the full living, those heart-sound bearing beings are all gone…

Slow…they have no chance against us…

Hiss…sniff…sniff…sniff. One of the guards outside just commented into our shared mind that he smelled something… sweet, almost human. It was from the airport runway though. Must be the left overs brought back by the half-dead.

These half-dead have herd instincts, like cattle…staying together. But their hunters, like lions to the pride, return with food for those who stay behind.

He always tells us to keep them together…so easy to herd them into places where they seek their human past…like the airport. When they stray…they often succumb to starvation. They don't always become one of us. They sometimes become full dead. And then… no use to us….neither fellow soldiers nor food.

He has plans for us. We are his loyal soldiers…we move together easily, naturally. The separation between humans still clings to the half-dead beings…but once they reach our state, full Boney, they can join the common mind…the superior state of being. That is better. No loneliness or separation torments us now…just as there is no longer any clinging, decaying flesh. We are part of the Boney whole…and He acts as the head…we are the limbs…

He wants us to watch one of them... he is different, which is not good. He eats too much brain, like a human drug addict, feeding from the thrill…and he separates himself from his group regularly…but not for reasons of finding food.

Watch now. Will watch and report…he is by himself again... No other member of the herd does that.

Hiss…hiss…

PLEASE LEAVE A REVIEW AND LET ME KNOW WHAT YOU THINK. THIS WAS AN EXPERIMENTAL CHAPTER, I WOULD REALLY LIKE FEEDBACK. I WILL SEND PREVIEWS OF THE NEXT CHAPTER TO ALL REVIEWERS, WHEN IT'S READY.


	3. Chapter 3 - Nora

I don't own the story Warm Bodies, or the characters R, M, Julie or Nora. Isaac Marion does. And Summit made the movie great.

Hey, guys. I'm submitting some musings and ramblings on this fascinating book.

Please note – this chapter utilizes a non-canon approach to Nora's backstory.

Chapter 3 - Nora

Once upon a time, the world worked. I don't remember it well, but I didn't worry about being eaten alive back then.

Yeah, it's the small stuff, the security of not having to worry about my place in the food chain, that I miss so much now. Second only to how much I miss my family.

I never got a chance to meet my father. I only know that he was Ethiopian. Sometimes I wonder if things would have been better if I had actually been in Ethiopia when this plague hit. Would I have been in the first wave to die? Is it better to have survived this long, to spend one's life in an eternal vigil for death, each day little more than a struggle to keep it at bay?

I used to feel like it was useless to continue. When my grandmother came to our apartment in Newark five years ago, the emotions on her face feuding between fear and sorrow, I knew what had happened. She didn't need to tell me the details, though she did, of course.

My mother's car had broken down, and the Dead had gotten to her. My grandfather had "given her peace," as they put it in our town. When she told me, I simply sank onto a chair in the living room. I sat and stared, holding my abdomen and rocking. She hugged me, saying "Let it out," but it wouldn't come out.

I had died inside, though I was still walking.

My grandparents had originally, on that day, been coming to take us west, somewhere deep in a remote area of the country. Maybe it was better out there, they hoped, somewhere isolated.

But it wasn't. Our new neighbor Stan, the strong, silent man in Idaho who had helped us get settled into the new ranch-style house out in the middle of nowhere, had been the one to show up in the middle of the night and take out both my grandmother and grandfather.

I had managed to run out of the house, wearing just my sleep shirt, barefoot, and climb into the pickup we kept just outside the kitchen door for such emergencies. When Stan showed up at the car window, his skin gray and his faced face smeared with my grandparents' blood, I rolled the window down and shot him in the face with the shotgun Grandpa kept in the front seat of the car.

I used to think that the key to finding the way of this out was to figure out how we got here.

That's not the norm. What I see mostly are people like Julie's dad, who at least started out meaning well, but now seem focused on putting up more and more extensive walls. I think they are keeping people outside of the walls of this city-within a city they've built. They leave other people at risk of certain death doing this. And that doesn't make sense – it just means more of them, the Dead, to come after us. Don't we want more of us, the Living? Ugh- it gives me a headache thinking about it.

And when did we start bringing in the Dead for target practice, to train the kids? Even more importantly, when did that stop bothering us?

I started coming back to life when I came to the stadium in the city. After shooting Stan in the middle of the night in Idaho, I drove the pickup until I ran out of gas and was left stranded in the middle of the desert. After waiting a day on the open road, I finally saw a huge green and silver truck-tractor come barreling down the road towards me. I stood on the roof of my truck and waved to the driver, shouting. He slowed down when he saw me, eventually coming to a stop next to my pickup. He then opened the window and leaned out, pointing his shotgun at my face. He simply said, "Say something."

"Get me out of here!" I yelled.

That did the trick. He decided I was one of the Living, and let me get into his cab.

It turns out that he was transporting supplies between the surviving Living fortresses. On our second day of driving, as I watched a city rise ahead of us on the horizon, he told me, "When we get inside, tell them you are 13. I don't care how old you are. I'm going to tell them this material I'm hauling was from your father's store. If they want it, they have to take you. Got it?"

I nodded. And that was my entrance ticket. They don't take everybody, apparently. Supplies are limited and running low. Those who don't get into the cities cluster together in houses outside the gate, trying to barricade themselves against attacks, hoping for rescue.

But I had managed to get inside, with the driver's help. After the General and Immigration Officer decided to allow me in, I was declared an orphan, and told that they were still working on the foster homes. In the meantime, the Supervisor of Building Projects, Mr. Kelvin, said I could stay with him. Least he could do for another fellow his trade, he declared.

Which of course, I wasn't. But I was alive, with a home inside the fortified walls.

Mr. Kelvin took me to his house and gave me a room across the hall from his son, Perry. After I had been there a few weeks, Perry and I got our hands on a bottle of wine that one of the salvage teams had sneak back in for him. We shared it, sitting in the living room on the floor, swapping stories interspersed with long periods of silence. We both had lost a lot in recent years. I knew he had a girlfriend, but when he reached out to stroke my cheek, I just leaned into his hand. Touches lead to other touches, and we spent the night in his bedroom, trying to forget our sorrows in one another's arms. Afterwards, of course, he went and told his blonde girlfriend, the General's daughter no less, all about it. %&^%## !

At first she hated me, of course. But time passed, and somehow, we became friends. Ironically, as she and Perry started pulling apart, she and I got closer.

Go figure.

PLEASE REVIEW. I WILL SEND A PREVIEW OF THE NEXT CHAPTER, TO ALL REVIEWERS. IT WILL BE IN M'S POV.

ALSO, I'M NOT GETTING A OF RESPONSES TO THIS STORY, SO THE NEXT CHAPTER WILL PROBABLY BE THE LAST.


	4. Chapter 4 - M

I don't own the story Warm Bodies, or the characters R, M, Julie or Nora. Isaac Marion does. And Summit made the movie great.

Hey, guys. I'm submitting some musings and ramblings on this fascinating book as well!

2/11/13 - I've decided to use this story to post character sketches for my plot-driven story, "A Dark Negative of Love." So all chapters, starting with Chapter 3, will contain some background information on characters for that story.

Chapter 4 – M

Another morning spent sulking in the women's bathroom, following yesterday's misunderstanding with R. It's useless to dwell on what happened, as first, the details elude me, and second, he is my only almost-friend in this world. We don't really have friends in this existence, Post-Death. True, there are people I regularly pass on the escalators or hallways of our airport, and when they wave or nod to me, I reply in kind. Especially the girls.

I like girls, and they like me. I wish I could remember more of how that worked. On hunting trips into the city, I find videos and other mementos of a Living existence, things that give me reminders of the basic mechanics of a Living body. But my equipment doesn't work anymore. It's too hard to focus, to try to make an effort when I'm with someone, though I have willing partners often enough.

Soon, its noon, and that means time to see R again. I make my way to the airport bar, our regular hang-out, and take my usual seat. He joins me, and we sit and have our almost conversations. I can easily get five words out, without too much struggle. I must have been a real talker when Living. Most of us only manage a few moans.

R can talk, a bit. But he generally doesn't get mange to get more than three words out. Still, that's three more than most, so that makes us fast companions in this non-Life afterlife.

For the most part, all of us travel the same paths each day, the gray and silver corridors of the airport that has become our world. Being outside, with just the huge sky muncher above us, is too intimidating. We like a little reminder of civilization around us, and that includes having a daily routine. How much of civilization was built on a daily routine, I wonder. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of a daily routine. I know that's not how the phrase went, but rituals still have the power to bring meaning to an otherwise terrifying existence. And so, we pace the airport during the day, and find out own little corners to stand and sway in at night.

But that's not enough for R. He doesn't stay inside the airport terminals all the time as we do. He lives outside, and has taken over a 747 as his own space. He wants…privacy. I can satisfy that need in a restroom stall, but he needs more. I see him tucking things into his pockets on each trips. Little portable trinkets. I don't say anything, as It's OK. It's just his thing. I'm thinking that he might have been a hoarder when Living. Or, like me, he's trying to find a link back to the Living.

As for me…I have flashes sometimes, from my former Living self. I see lots of women, up close. Different hair, different smiles, different laughs…and moans. There were many of them, of that I am certain. I don't need trinkets as a way to get back to the experience of living, I need bodies. Women's bodies. That means pornography, when I can find it, or always seeking women victims on our hunts. As I feed on their brains, their female memories revive me so much more than the male memories.

But there is one scene from my personal life that hasn't quite left my brain. This one haunts me by continually teasing me, staying out of reach, and keeping me struggling to recall my Living self. It takes place in a hospital, in a delivery room. Sometimes I think I might have been a doctor, because I keep remembering this birth scene. The mother has brilliant red hair, the color sucking the energy out of the rest of the room. Even in her pain, she is gorgeous. She is giving birth to a child, and I am there. She looks so pleased with the child when we hand him to her, the infant still red from the birth process, his skull deformed from her birth canal.

So am I the father or am I the doctor? The images of this memory keeps flitting away from me, never allowing me to focus long enough to determine my role.

But now my role is Consumer of the Living. I know R hates killing the Living to eat, but when he's hungry, he will lead the hunts. He's an excellent leader, staying at the forefront, savage in pursuit of his victims, tearing them apart like the rest of us. But when he's done, he always shows so much regret. It's not like I'm happy with how we have to feed either, but I try to get him to show more strength, by teasing him with phrases like, "Such a girl." I worry, because if he gives in to feelings of self-hatred over feeding, he might quit eating. If that happens, he could die a final death. We see it around us, not daily, but often. I…don't want to lose him.

Time to go to the airport lounge to meet him. I have followers again, I notice. They hang back in a gaggle, looking down when they realize I have spotted them. They don't giggle, as we can't anymore. But their facial expressions appear to be trying to form smiles.

There are three of them this time. Two are older women, and older Dead as well. Their skin appears more gray, and their clothes more worn. They must have been turned right when this whole thing started, whenever that was. The tall brunette wears what must have been a white blouse and red pencil skirt. The shorter woman, with gray hair, is in a heather jogging outfit. Someone must have caught her while she was exercising for her health. Ha. The third member of the group is a young girl appears to have been about 16. She must have been caught while clubbing, as she is wearing a brilliant, blue sequined mini-dress, with shredded black stockings and high heels. Her hair is dyed purple and black, and her mascara must have bled during her death throes, because she now has teary raccoon eyes. That's OK – I'll find a way to lead her away from the others for our own private dance.

But for now, I smile at all of them, and they duck their heads. They follow me at a distance. I turn slowly, giving them a good look at me. Yes, I still got it.

PLEASE REVIEW. I WILL SEND A PREVIEW OF FUTURE CHAPTERS TO ALL REVIEWERS. Next chapter – Miles, the Truck Driver, who runs supplies between the domes.


	5. Chapter 5 - Miles, the Truck Driver

I don't own the story Warm Bodies, or the characters R, M, Julie or Nora. Isaac Marion does. And Summit made the movie great.

Hey, guys. I'm submitting some musings and ramblings on this fascinating book as well!

2/11/13 - I've decided to use this story to post character sketches for my plot-driven story, "A Dark Negative of Love." So Chapter 3 on will contain some background information on characters for that story.

Chapter 5 – Miles, the Truck Driver

Driving this desolate landscape, keeping my eyes focused on the road while scanning the landscape for danger. None so far this morning. Glancing up at the two yellowing photos pinned to my cab roof, I study each one in turn. They're getting old, but I can't let the reason for my continuing fade. Two photos are all I have left of my old world. Once they're gone, it'll just be my memories.

Looking out the window, I see that the asphalt of the road ahead of me is starting to break up under the pressure of the spring thaw. I don't know how much longer I'll be able to travel this route with a load this big unless we figure out how to do repairs. May have to bring a crew out from Grigio's dome to help me fix it. They're the ones who would be cutoff if I can't make this run, after all. They've got a good crew there, good skills.

It settled down a few years ago. At first, as I drove, I passed lots of fires, fire from buildings and burning cars, and saw so many desperate people frantically signaling me to stop and help them.

Haven't had that in…years.

The first photo is of my family: my mother, father and two younger brothers. It was taken at a family reunion, one of the few I attended, maybe 15 years ago. They had carefully planned it, holding it during one of my very few trips home from overseas. This rig I drive, it belonged to the family business…it was my father's, one I had never planned to join.

I had joined the Forces, in order to see the world, straight out of high school. I didn't want to be pinned to one place, one house, one city, for any length of time. There was too much out there, and so I signed up, just like my Uncle Jeb did, as soon as I graduated. The recruiter knew I was a sure thing, guess I showed too much enthusiasm. I never liked being a sure bet, but he had figured out exactly how to sell me on signing up: getting to travel, being able to right the wrongs of the world. Being part of something both exciting and dangerous. Action, that's what I was after.

Somehow the world I was saving kept being some sandy desert place. The names changed, but the terrain didn't: Iraq, Iran…occasionally, Afghanistan. Troubles in Africa. But I had made that life my own, and found a new family within it. The second photo is of a few guys from my platoon, gathered on an old tank from the days of Rommel, if you can believe it, that we found in Africa. From the Second World War. And how many wars were there after that?

But the business of human war was almost over, though we didn't know it at the time. There were strange rumors already back then. But we chalked it up to…something else. Cannibalism? Madness? People were dying, horribly. In my experience, though, people die horribly at one another's hands all the time.

I figured we would be deployed to wherever things were worst, or at least very problematic for those countries politically connected to the United States. And I would see this madness first-hand then. No point getting impatient – can't get impatient in the Service. But there were stories that whatever was going on hitting the larger cities, in the "civilized" parts of the world, parts that weren't supposed to need rescue from units such as mine. Cities such as Paris, London, even New York City, back in the U.S.A.

Then Dad's partner retired. I was sitting in my tent, staring out into the desert when I saw the e-mail come through. I read it, decided quick enough that it was time, time to head back home.

When I went to my C.O.'s tent, he glanced up at me, and then stopped what he was doing, seeming to read my expression correctly. He'd always known me. He simply said, "You're done this time, right?"

"Yes, I'm going back for good this time," I replied. "My father's company needs help. Time to take on my family responsibility. The problems of the world will have to fall on the next guy's shoulders."

He didn't seem surprised. "We're getting some very strange intelligence out here. It's like…the world is starting to fall apart." He pursed his lips. "I haven't briefed you guys on much, got orders from the Pentagon sealing my lips. But this I can say: be careful when you go back. Even around your friends. That's all I can tell you, as none of what I'm hearing makes sense. Also, I'm hearing from other units that guys go out on patrol, and then don't come back. Not deserters, either. They just…disappear."

So I went home. Even on leave, I had helped drive a few loads for my Dad. Truth was, I was glad to do it, as it got me out of the house. The less family time, the better. He understood, and let me go. I just didn't know what to do with all those emotions that everybody had. Now, of course, I wish I had spent every second of my leave with them.

When I got home, the family was the same, but the newspapers headlines all looked like something that only the National Enquirer would have run. People were being…eaten? The dead walking?

Mom met me at the door as I drove up, trying not to cry. "Your grandmother thinks it's the end of the world. She wanted to see you. She's inside."

I nodded and went inside. Dad was there, and he stood up, saying, "Welcome home, son," clapping me on the back. He looked serious, though. He'd been watching TV, and I sat down with him, taking my usual spot on the sofa. Usually we watched the game when I came home. Whatever sport was in season. But this time, there were no games. There was only news footage, showing a lot of fires burning, confusion in the streets, and weird first person interviews. About seeing people they knew staggering around and attacking other people. Biting them, tearing them to pieces. Footage of people running, sometimes making it to safety, sometimes falling to a mob.

Made me wonder how the reporters were getting the story. How were they staying safe?

Dad looked over at me. "What do we do?"

"We keep going," I said. "You and I both know we'll go crazy sitting here waiting. People still need stuff. Now, maybe they need medical supplies. Stuff for the hospitals."

He nodded, with a smile he didn't try to hide. I knew that look. He was proud of me. And also, like me, he wanted some action. Getting married had tied him to a house and his growing family, so in order to keep some semblance of freedom, he had started his trucking company. It had grown to a reasonable size, and he had secured locations at strategic spots throughout the country. Any profits, he had sunk into buying new rigs and the property that he stored them on throughout the country. He planned to offer jobs to all his nephews and any other family members who wanted to join the company. He hadn't had many takers, but he still made his plans.

So we drove our trucks, carrying critical supplies between the burning cities and growing fortresses. We kept guns on our laps, and eventually rigged the trucks to blow and take us with them, if worst came to worst.

It did for Dad. I got one last call from him. "This looks like it. Good-bye son. I can't reach your mother, tell her…" and then the line cut off.

I lost her at about the same time. The closest I've got to family now is the various kids in these locations. I keep telling myself that I can't let them down. Got to bring them stuff. Maybe something that can make the smile.

I now drive between the domes, instead of the cities. These fortresses are like islands for the surviving humans. No one really has any idea whether anyone is left overseas.

Every one of these fortress domes has a General in charge, and a Colonel I can contact if necessary. But I tend to deal with the Generals, because now, drivers like me provide them with the only first-hand intelligence of the world outside their walls.

They give me warehouse locations, and I drive to them, picking up loads, blasting my way through any of the Dead that come between me and my load. I sleep barricaded in upper rooms of buildings, buildings I enter by climbing on the roof of my truck. Can't always get to the safety of a fortified city on any given run.

So far, so good. I keep up my fleet by not driving the same truck all the time. I have my trucks stationed at various cities, at Dad's properties, unhooking after each load to keep each truck running as long as I can. Checking the tires, being meticulous with my maintenance. No room for mistakes. In addition to running loads, occasionally I act as an escort for workers between cities. Sometimes they take their trucks and equipment and drive with me, sometimes they just ride in my truck. Whichever way, for a few hours or a few days, I'm not alone out here on this road.

This barren wilderness. It seems more peaceful out here now. I don't see the fires like I used to.

The sunsets are beautiful.

I wonder if it we will be able to survive.

I have to think we're worth saving. We're worth giving a damn about.

PLEASE REVIEW. I WILL SEND A PREVIEW OF THE NEXT CHAPTER. I THINK THE NEXT CHARACTER WILL EITHER BE PERRY KELVIN'S FATHER OR THE GENERAL FROM THE GOLDMAN DOME.


	6. Chapter 6 - Mr Kelvin

I don't own the story Warm Bodies, or the characters R, M, Julie or Nora. Isaac Marion does. And Summit made the movie great.

Hey, guys. I'm submitting some musings and ramblings on this fascinating book as well!

2/11/13 - I've decided to use this story to post character sketches for my plot-driven story, "A Dark Negative of Love." So Chapter 3 on will contain some background information on characters for that story.

Chapter 6 – Mr. Kelvin

I glanced over at the boy sitting next to me, tense and worried.

"I'm sorry, son," I said softly. "I had thought we would be staying here, as it's…closer to our old home. But the General says that there's a dome run by General Grigio that needs my skills. I have to think that we should go where we're needed."

He nodded dutifully, obviously unconvinced. Losing his mother had been hard. Knowing that I had to shoot her in the head so that she would find peace must have been harder.

"I wish she was with us, you can't imagine how much," I murmured softly, reaching for his hand.

He jerked his hand away, and I pulled mine back, disappointed.

A knock at my window brought me back to reality. It was the bearded, grizzled face of Miles, the truck driver who would be escorting us to Grigio's dome. Apparently he regularly ran supplies between the domes, and they trusted him.

"Ready?" he asked simply.

"Yes, lead on," I replied, staring straight ahead at the road in front of us.

"I'll lead until we get on the main road," he replied. "Then I want you ahead of me. I can see you, and as I'm higher in my rig, I can see anything coming up ahead. We'll keep in touch with walkie-talkies."

He handed me one of the small rectangular boxes through the window, glancing at Perry. Looking down at the instrument in his hand, he asked gently, "He going to be all right?"

"I have to think so," I answered quietly. "We just lost his mother."

He nodded, and then climbed into his green and white rig.

As he pulled out, I took a look back over my shoulder. I had been so relieved when we finally found this dome. I had put out an SOS on my radio a few weeks earlier, as I drove across the country, frantically trying to find a refuge for Perry and myself. After trying all the channels, I finally got a garbled message back, something that sounded like "maybe Memphis," so we headed there. We found this dome, and as we pulled up, we were stopped by the armed guards posted at the entrance.

I stopped when they signaled me to, but left the motor running as they approached the cab. I rolled down my window to answer their questions, and then they looked into the back of my truck. When they saw my tools, cables, and bags of concrete, they stopped and called someone on their walkie-talkie.

A man dressed in a khaki military uniform had come to the front gate. He introduced himself, very formally, as General Hegel, the leader of the Memphis dome, and he welcomed us, gesturing form me to drive my truck in through the enormous front gate.

I pulled in, glancing over at Perry, trying to catch his reaction. He was leaning forward, looking through the window with a mix of curiosity and hope on his face.

Once inside, with the front gate closed behind us, I pulled over, turned off the engine, and looked around. Initially I was relieved to see other people. They looked wary, but still, there were people. The walls looked sturdy. Most importantly, Perry looked relieved to be off the road.

They showed us to a rickety, one story aluminum building that was labeled "Guest Quarters." It wasn't much, but the rooms contained a bed with sheets and blankets, and there was a common bathroom I the hallway. After weeks on the road, it was wonderful to take a shower and shave.

We had dinner at the General's house that night. I sensed that this was considered an honor, one not frequently bestowed on visitors or potential new residents.

The food he put on the table wouldn't have been considered a good spread in the old days, but for the current times, it was a feast. Legumes dominated, and there was a bowl of fruit that appeared to be canned fruit cocktail. The best part of the meal was sitting down at a dining room table, with real place settings, and having conversation with adults. And the sense of security that came from feeling that I had a chance to make sure Perry would be safe, if anything should happen to me.

I was determined to make myself so valuable that his future was secured.

That's when the General brought up Grigio's dome. Apparently it was under discussion a lot at these dinner.

"Initially, he took in everyone," General Hegel began. "There was no thought as to providing housing or food; he just let everyone in, like he had an ark. But things began to change.

They started building housing, but the emphasis was always on fortifying the walls, providing security. So the housing is…haphazard. Let me show you a photo."

He pulled out a photograph of something that could barely be called a house. A tall, spindly structure, no real foundation. It appeared to have been constructed entirely of cast-off materials, bits of corrugated steel, cinder and other building blocks. Not only was it unstable, it was also unattractive. I winced looking at the photo.

"Now I'm not a building or materials expert," the General continued, after seeming to note my reaction to the photo, "but these structures just can't survive. There were a few collapses, especially after rain, and the General was devastated when deaths occurred. But he can't seem to focus on stabilizing his infrastructure, if you see what I mean. He's focused on the whole group, not individuals. And, quite frankly, on his daughter.

He lost his wife a few years ago. Unclear what happened, but after that, he stopped letting people in, and began a much greater focus on sealing things up. If you ask me, and I would prefer you not repeat this, he hasn't really put a lot of emphasis on stabilizing his buildings, because he's got more people than he can feed. If a few die, the rest will survive."

I sat back in my chair, stunned, trying to absorb this information.

"Don't get me wrong," the General continued after a moment. "General Grigio's a good man, a strong leader. But in my opinion, not only does he need your help, but also all those people in that dome need it as well. Now, what he'll want you to work on is this merger he has planned with another dome. The two Generals want to construct a tunnel, so there can be safe movement between the domes. But really – fix what's going on in there, if you can."

After we ate, I rose and thanked the General for his hospitality.

"I'll give you my answer in the morning," I told him seriously. "I have to consider my son above all else. We're here now, and we're safe."

"Thank you," replied General Hegel. "As I said, you are more than welcome to stay here, but I believed that you might want to know my complete thoughts on the matter. As for transport to the other dome, if you wait a few days, I can almost guarantee you safe passage. We have a driver whose been driving between these domes since the beginning on the plague. He knows every road, and has safe houses along the route. He will escort you, if you want him to. His name is Miles."

PLEASE LEAVE ME A REVIEW, LET ME KNOW WHAT YOU THINK OF MY LITTLE EXPLORATIONS OF THESE CHARACTERS AND THE BOOK.

I'M NOT SURE IF I WILL BE ADDING ANY MORE CHAPTERS AT THIS POINT. IF I RUN INTO ADDITIONAL CHARACTERS IN MY STORY A DARK NEGATIVE OF LOVE, THERE MAY BE MORE CHAPTERS.


End file.
